


A Roamin’ Catholic

by Obscure_ramblings



Series: Getting Sauced [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Crack, Fluff and Crack, Food, Gun Violence, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, POV Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Sleepwalking, Swearing, don't worry the victim is an inanimate object
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29698980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Obscure_ramblings/pseuds/Obscure_ramblings
Summary: Something wasn’t right. The space in front of him was cold.Joe’s eyes sprang open and he pushed himself up to stand in one smooth move. Normally slow to wake, the knowledge that Nicky was missing from their bed was enough to catapult him into immediate full alertness. Where was he?Peeking around the edge of the doorframe, Joe scanned the area. Nicky stood completely naked in front of the open pantry, gun held in a firm, sure grip. Joe came to stand next to him.Sure enough, Nicky’s eyes were wide open but slightly glazed, his usually intense focus dulled by sleep.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Getting Sauced [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2185686
Comments: 26
Kudos: 163





	A Roamin’ Catholic

**Author's Note:**

> Writing silly little things that make me happy to break up the sprawling sex ed teacher!Joe AU that somehow became a soccer AU and is fast approaching 20k words with no end in sight. Yes, I did have to make the title a pun.
> 
> Inspired by [this hilarious post](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/wickedpact/639699510917021696) by wickedpact on Tumblr. Thanks for letting me link it here!

An arrow of _wrongness_ tugged at Joe’s awareness, bringing him reluctantly back to consciousness. He kept his eyes closed and extended his senses, scanning his body in the ritual way he’d been doing for nigh on a millennium. No crackling sensation in the back of his mind that would signify he had once more defied death. No simmer of pain to indicate he was in the process of recovering from a more severe injury. But something still wasn’t right.

The space in front of him was cold.

Joe’s eyes sprang open and he pushed himself up to stand in one smooth move. Normally slow to wake, the knowledge that Nicky was missing from their bed was enough to catapult him into immediate full alertness.

The pale light of early morning was just beginning to filter in through the flimsy lace curtains that covered the windows. The glowing red numbers on the clock read 5:32 a.m.

Joe looked around, noting that the door they’d closed behind them the previous night—all the better to take advantage of the privacy of having their own room at this safe house—was now ajar. He kept his eyes on the visible sliver of hallway as he reached under their pillow. The pistol Nicky habitually kept tucked under it was gone.

A chill prickled at Joe’s skin, raising goosebumps in its wake. Where was he? 

Joe moved as silently as he could across the room, extracting a knife from the duffel bag he’d discarded next to the door the previous evening. Its curved length was encased in a sheath, a swirling pattern picked out in the dark leather, soothing Joe’s fingers with its familiarity. Nicky had bought him this knife decades ago, from a travelling merchant caravan in the Kazakh Steppe, and although the sheath had needed replacing more than once over years as the leather grew brittle from long use, each new slip of tooled leather bore the same markings. 

The slightest scuff of a bare foot against wooden floorboards had Joe pulling the knife free, carefully placing the sheath back on top of the duffle bag as he slid into position behind the door. Breathing shallowly, he listened for any further sounds in the hallway. Silence oozed, thick and uncomfortable, pinning him down with its oppressive weight. Joe’s heartbeat thumped loudly in his ears as adrenaline pumped through his veins. 

Moving to brace his back against the wall, Joe cast a quick glance through the door, surveying the scene. Shards of early morning light peeked through the equally shoddy curtains that arrayed the other windows in this safehouse. The hall was deserted.

Another small noise pulled Joe forward. Placing his feet precisely, he stuck to the edges of the hall, where the floorboards were less worn and prone to squeaking. Had it come from one of the other bedrooms? The kitchen, perhaps? 

The sudden appearance of a face in his peripheral vision had Joe spinning on the ball of his foot, knife held in a tight grip, arm out to the side to give himself space to manoeuvre as he confronted…his own reflection looking back at him from a mirror. Shit. He blew out a silent breath, trying to shake off the spike of fear.

Turning his back to the mirror, Joe leaned his body to the side, angling so he could look down the length of the hallway. The doors to the other bedrooms were all shut tight, but at the far end the kitchen door was wide open. A low rumble of speech issued from the space beyond. Joe recognised Nicky’s voice but the words were too quiet for Joe to discern them.

Tiptoeing past Booker’s room, then Andy and Quỳnh’s and finally Nile’s, Joe paused just outside the entrance to the kitchen. Yes, that was definitely Nicky. But was he alone?

Peeking around the edge of the doorframe, Joe scanned the area. Nicky stood completely naked in front of the open pantry, gun held in a firm, sure grip. Looking beyond him, Joe saw his errant sleepwalker was the only occupant in the room. Relaxing his tense posture, Joe let his own footfalls resume their normal pattern, well-worn floorboards shifting under his weight as he came to stand next to Nicky.

Sure enough, Nicky’s eyes were wide open but slightly glazed, his usually intense focus dulled by sleep. Joe followed the line of Nicky’s arm down past the end of the gun, squinting in the low light to identify the subject of his love’s wrath.

A lone jar of red sauce encased in glass, golden lidded, sprawling label bearing an image of tomatoes, garlic, basil. Small writing spanned the surface and although Joe couldn’t see the writing, he knew well each claim (“Blatant falsehoods, Yusuf, each one a LIE!”) that surrounded the damning word picked out in bold, black letters: “Prego.”

“Bastard,” Joe groaned under his breath. It had to have been Booker. The Frenchman never got tired of riling Nicky up with his insistence that store-bought pasta sauce was just as good as freshly made.

Now that he was standing at Nicky’s side, Joe could hear the words the other man was muttering in Italian. “I’ll do it, you son of a bitch. I’ll fucking do it. This is the end of the road for you, you atrocity. Scourge upon this earth.”

Joe went to put his knife away, only to realise he was absent any pockets. Or clothes in general, actually. “Damn it.” Instead, he put it on the counter as he considered his options, making no move to take the gun away from Nicky. Sudden movements were often enough to startle him into full awareness, and in the split second of transition before he reached that state, Nicky was unpredictable. Joe had been shot, sliced, burned and—on one memorable occasion—impaled, before he’d learned his lesson. The others had been luckier; after seeing Joe squirming on the end of the fireplace poker, they’d called a vote and agreed as a group that Joe was now the de facto Nicky waker-upper.

Nicky always felt horrible after each of these incidents and hovered over Joe for days in the aftermath. Not that Joe disliked the attention, by and large, but, well, he was over nine hundred years old, after all. Certainly old enough to appreciate the value of being permitted to use the bathroom alone. Uninterrupted. For five fucking minutes.

Now, Joe needed to decide on his best course of action for getting Nicky back to bed without waking the others. While it would serve Booker right to be startled awake by a gunshot, followed by the tinkle of exploding glass, the others hadn’t done anything to earn Nicky’s ire, and would no doubt be appreciative of an undisturbed sleep. They were all tired, coming off a prolonged mission that lasted two weeks longer than it was supposed to, which is no doubt how Nicky had managed to escape Joe’s sleeping grasp without waking him.

“Habibi,” Joe said quietly, positioning himself to intercept the pistol if it swung his way. “Nicolò, my love. Will you put the gun down?”

Nicky switched into English, replying in the same language with which Joe had prompted him. “Joe. I will protect you. Do not worry. Just stand behind me.” He adjusted his weight, leaning forward slightly to put the broad width of his shoulders between Joe and the foe that sat mockingly on the shelf.

“Wait!” Joe was too late. Nicky squeezed the trigger and the jar shattered into a thousand pieces, thick red sauce spraying all over the inside of the pantry, slopping onto the floor and spreading into a puddle.

“Wha…Huh?” The noise of the shot had jolted Nicky awake and he stared at the carnage. Green eyes wide and wild, he looked around and inhaled sharply when he saw Joe. “Yusuf! Where are you hurt?” He dropped the gun to the floor and reached for Joe, running his hands over Joe’s face and the arm he’d had held out to reach for the weapon before Nicky pulled the trigger.

Hearing three doors slam open, Joe realised he had only moments to react. He grabbed the apron from where it hung on a hook on the wall, flinging it on over Nicky’s head. Reaching out for the tea towel that lay tucked tidily over the oven door handle, he flicked it open and held it over his groin, only now noticing that the spray-back of pasta sauce had left him flecked with red, smearing under Nicky’s searching fingers.

Nile arrived first in the kitchen, gun leading the way; Andy and Quỳnh hot on her heels with labrys and sword in hand, and Booker just a few steps behind with his own gun pointing in front of him. Joe turned to face them, trying to do up the tie at the back of Nicky’s apron with one hand while also fending off the worried palms patting him down, assessing his supposed injuries. “It’s okay, guys, Nicky was sleepwalking. We’ll clean up; you can go back to bed.” 

There was a collective groan from the group, interspersed with swear words in several languages, as the women all tromped back into the hall. Booker stayed behind, a shit-eating grin appearing on his face as he surveyed the scene. “You owe me a new jar of Prego,” he said to Nicky.

“Prego?” Nostrils flaring, Nicky shot a glare at the sauce-covered pantry. By all rights it should have lit on fire from the sheer force of his ire. “You did this. You brought that abomination into this house.” He swooped down and picked up his gun, apron flapping open around his sides as he moved. “Give me one reason not to do it.”

The high-pitched noise Booker let out as he hightailed it out of the room could best be described as a giggle. The kitchen door swung shut behind him and Nicky turned to look at Joe once more, catching his gaze lifting up from where it had been zeroed in on Nicky’s ass. Smirking, Nicky took a couple of swaying steps towards Joe, letting the apron slide with his movement to reveal the bare skin beneath. “See something you like, my love?” he asked, sliding his arms around Joe’s waist and pressing their fronts together.

Joe grinned back, dropping the tea towel so he could wrap both arms around Nicky’s shoulders, completely unabashed at having been caught out ogling his husband. “Many things,” he replied, leaning in for a kiss. Two seconds later, Nicky pulled out of his embrace and raced over to the sink, spitting into it and rinsing his mouth out with a stream of water from the tap. “Fucking Prego!” he exclaimed, spitting again to get the taste out of his mouth.

Joe sighed and went to fetch the mop and bucket from the corner cupboard. It looked like he would be having an early start to the day, and not even a kiss to make up for it.


End file.
